Red Lentil Soup

Originally posted by "Zed" on the old Athletic Progression forum.

This is a recipe you see in variations in cookbooks (reference posted below) and in kitchens. It is a basic soup you cannot mess up and it only gets better each day it sits in the fridge. I make a pot of this on Sunday during soup season and it usually lasts most of the week. It is a great lunch or evening soup. Easy to make and delicious. Still you can make this for a fairly fancy dinner course and people will still rave over it. All that you require is: (Zed  made a double batch)


1 cup of red lentils (use the red ones and those grown in Turkey if you can find them. Sometimes Indian food stores will carry red Turkish lentils) (I used a 1 pound bag)

3 cups of beef broth (I used 2 1 litre vegetable broth)

Bring the beef broth to a boil in a medium sized soup pot and stir in the lentils and 1 cup of water. If it doesn't look like there is enough liquid add more water.  You want to cook the lentils until they soften and cook thoroughly and that can take anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes.

On another burner
Dice 1 medium onion or place it in a food processor and whirl it into fine oblivion. The smaller the pieces of onion the better the soup! ( I used 2 onions and a food processor)

Place the onion and either three tablespoons of butter OR an equal amount of olive oil in a skillet and sautee the onion for three or four minutes until the onion begins to soften. Here you can add a little crushed red Turkish pepper if you so choose. It makes the soup a bit zesty but trust me it's good. Once the onions have cooked and are softened add two or three tablespoons of flour to the onions

Add 2 cups of tomato juice to the onion and butter mixture and allow the flour to thicken it. (I used 4 cups)

After the lentils have thoroughly cooked combine the thickened tomato juice and onions with the lentils in soup pot containing the lentils.

Now you are free to add a bit of black pepper right before serving. The soup should look like a thick tomato soup but it won't taste anything like a bland tomato soup. (I pureed the soup now with a food processor)

I serve this with cornbread muffins on the side. This is our favourite soup and we hope it can be yours too. From TurkeyTravelPlanner.com  by Tom Brosnahan: Turkish Travel Tips & Talk